He Missed Her
by Flying Penguinz
Summary: Snape finds Lily Evans after Voldemort's visit to Gordric's Hollow. He can't deal with the memories of his past. Lily is gone.
1. A Heartfelt Goodbye

**Chapter One—A Heartfelt Good-Bye**

When Snape apparated in front of Gordric's Hollow, the sign of the Dark Lord's presence was the billowing wisps of smoke rising from the hole in the roof. He looked both ways down the deserted street to make sure no one was following him, and entered the wrecked building.

The front door had been blasted off its hinges. Snape picked his way through the wooden splinters and made his way into the hall, peering into the living room. A wand was sitting on the couch, the only thing that looked as though it hadn't been touched during the fight that had gone on in this room. The wand was familiar. It was the same one that had thrown curses at Snape in his years at Hogwarts. It was the same wand that had been the cause of so much of his pain and bullying. It was the wand of James Potter.

How could James have been so _stupid?_ He couldn't go up against the Dark Lord defenseless! Snape knew James was arrogant, but he never knew how much so until then.

Snape moved out of the den and back into the hallway. And that's when he saw the body of his old enemy lying on the floor. James Potter was dead.

_But if James is dead..._

Snape stopped himself from thinking his worst fear. Lily couldn't be dead. She would have run. She would have disapparated. She was smarter than James Potter.

He stepped over the body, unable to look at it. Despite the torture and hate that Snape had seen in that face, he couldn't bear to look at it again knowing he was the cause of James' death.

Severus Snape moved up the staircase and the first door was barely hanging onto the door frame by a hinge. Snape knew. The dreaded voice in his head was whispering words, dark tendrils of words that threatened to strangle him without mercy. But still, he moved on.

He moved across the threshold and saw her.

_Lily._

Oh, _Lily!_

She was on the floor, her arms wide in the last futile attempt to save her child, her lips partly open in a final scream, and her green eyes were wide in a horrifying glimpse of her last moment. Her dark red hair was strewn out around her head in a waterfall of red earth.

"What have I _done_ to you?" he breathed, falling to his knees and cradling her head in his lap. He picked up her soft hand. It was still slightly warm. "I'm _so _sorry, Lily. I'm so sorry." He pressed her hand to his lips.

_Maybe it's not too late..._

"No," he said. "Impossible."

But a part of him willed it to be. He wanted to see her again—alive. He wanted to see her smile. He wanted to see her eyes. He wanted to look into them and tell her how horrible this all was, and how it was terrible to see her body laid out upon the ground as if she were nothing more but a puppet with cut strings.

He reached for his wand and whispered, "_Rennervate_." It didn't work. Lily was still lying dead before him. He put his wand over her heart and said loudly, "_Rennervate_." A tear slipped down his cheek. "Wake up," he begged. "Please." Again, he tried. "_Rennervate!_" But to no avail.

"Lily," he said, saying her name aloud for the first time in a long while, "I'll do anything. Wake up. _Please_, wake up!" But, he, a master of the Dark Arts should have known there was nothing he could have done to bring the light back in her dead eyes. He closed them ever so gently and let the tears roll freely down his stricken face.

"Remember the time," he said, "you got the password from Isa, another Slytherin, so I didn't have to sleep in the hall because I forgot it once? And the time you fed the Giant Squid a potion that had gone bad? And the time you promised to never let being in different houses stop us from being friends?" His tone grew darker and louder, as if he were accusing Lily of what happened. "What about the time you promised to always be there for me during the summer?" he sobbed. "You said whenever my parents fought, I could just send an owl and you'd be there?" He stumbled over words in his rush to get them out of his mouth, as if they had been kept in for too long and turned to poison inside him. "Do you remember when you said you'd never let your sister say anything about me again? Remember the summer of our third year, you said there couldn't be anything more powerful than our friendship? _Do you remember?_"

Snape was shouting now, throwing harsh words at her dead body as if she could take all of his secrets and her unfulfilled promises to the grave with her.

_What about you, Severus,_ a voice hissed from the back of his mind. _You're so much more responsible for what happened. _You_ practically sold Lily to the Dark Lord!_

All of the pain he'd been holding in for years was coming out tonight in racking sobs that shook his whole frame.

"I know," he cried. "I know! I'm the one! YOU SHOULD HAVE KILLED ME!" he yelled to the night.

And then he realized he was clutching his left forearm. The place where the Dark Mark was burned into his flesh. A mistake he would forever regret.

He took the tip of his wand and used a charm to cause the tip of it to feel like a razor whenever it made contact with anything. He pushed it to his Dark Mark and sliced away.

There were scars over the brand from previous attempts to remove it this way. But this was the first time Snape felt so desperate to rid himself of the thing.

_I. Belong. To. No. One._

And then a baby cried.

Snape looked up and finally noticed a child who had watched on with curious eyes—Lily's eyes. He stowed away his wand and threw the sleeve of his robe back over his bloody Dark Mark. The little thing continued to watch Snape and never broke eye contact. Snape finally had to look away.

But what his eyes met were Lily Evans. She would always be Lily Evans to Severus. _Never_ a Potter.

He leaned down slowly and his lips touched her smooth forehead. It was a painful thing—the kiss. It represented too many years of pain and sorrow and the possibilities of what could have been. And then he stood and left the room, leaving Harry Potter to fend for himself until help for him came.


	2. Destroying Memories

**Chapter Two—Destroying Memories**

Snape decided to leave the body of Lily Evans in Gordric's Hollow. If anyone were to find out that he had been there, he would be in trouble with his master.

He _hated_ calling the Dark Lord his master. It had been a mistake he'd made when he was younger. But there had been no one to turn to. Not after Lily had gone to chase after that _Potter_ boy. But it was as if he could sense it. The distance between them was too great. They were from two almost entirely different sides of the game. Gryffindors and Slytherins were fated not to get along. But the distance had been growing further and further. So much so that at one point in their friendship, they had hardly ever spoken to each other except to nod politely in the hall on their way to dinner.

But joining He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's ranks was the worst mistake in his life.

Or was it calling Lily a Mudblood?

Or was it even falling for Lily in the first place? Lily Evans had been the girl that everyone admired. Everyone looked at her. And when Snape was with her, everyone stared. But she hadn't cared. They had been such good friends. He had loved that girl so much. And Snape liked to think that at one point - at one point, Lily Evans had loved him back.

But it was gone now. All of it. There was nowhere else to go. Now there was _nothing_. He could just end it all and no one would care, no one would notice.

Snape glanced at Gordric's Hollow behind his back as he walked quickly down the quiet street. A shining light was hovering above his head near the clouds somewhere and a rumbling sound emerged from the sky. He had no idea what it could be, but he ought to be out of there quickly.

But the memories Gordric's Hollow brought to the forefront of his mind. All of the times he would walk by here and wonder what she was doing before he'd leaked information to the Dark Lord. Just, all of the times...

He hated them.

He _hated_ that he couldn't let go of them.

So he would destroy them.

Snape disapparated to the first place he thought of when the name Lily kept floating around in his mind. The playground he'd first seen her at.

Snape was unsure, but as he watched the swings move and creak as they swung idly in the small breeze, he wondered if he could have fallen for Lily on this very spot. He looked down at his feet. He was behind the exact same bush he'd hidden behind when he'd first set eyes on Lily Evans. Snape had grown too tall to easily hide behind the bush again, but the view he got of the rusty, old swing set brought back gut wrenching memories of Lily.

He wanted her alive again. He wanted her here so they could reminisce on everything. Everything.

Snape whipped out his wand, cutting off any other thoughts, and aimed it carefully at the playground.

It exploded and fell to the hard ground with a crash that erupted the silent evening.

Snape sun on his heels, not wanting to look at the object of Lily's break into pieces.

Snape knew what he would remove next.

He left the small playground and stepped onto the street, walking down the middle of the road, wishing a giant, muggle car would crash into him to bring about his end. He wouldn't have to deal with the Dark Lord any longer. There would be no suspicion. It would be an accident and everyone else could get on with their lives.

But nothing did. It was quiet and dark in the middle of the night just a few neighborhoods away from Spinner's End.

Snape walked through familiar alleyways that forced even more sorrow into his mind and soul. He remembered Lily and him racing this way, seeing who would get there first. Snape would always let her win. He liked to watch her pretty red hair fly behind her as she ran.

Snape forced his way through piles of garbage, not wanting to take an alternative route to his destination other than the way he'd taken whenever he'd been with Lily.

He reached the corner. The street divided the neighborhood of his youth into two sections. On the left, a dark green forest, shadowed by the dark night, but lit up so slightly by the sliver of moon that hung in the sky. On the right, pitiful houses, small and uncared for.

Snape went left, into the forest. He pushed his way through foliage and thick grass until he came to the very heart. Everything was still there. The pitcher they had brought for water and tea, the pillows that they'd set out to relax on. They were more than a decade old, dirty with mildew and the pitcher was broken, but they were there. Weeds grew wild and leaves had fallen on their temporary sanctuary of captured happiness. It was all too known and cherished.

Snape remembered he had thought this had been a place he would always be able to escape to. Whenever his parents were fighting and he was in danger of becoming subject to their rage, he'd run here. Half the time, Lily was sitting there, too. Laying on her pillow and staring up at the canopy of tree leaves above. He thought Lily would always be here for him.

Snape knelt in the unkempt grass and weeds and picked up a shard of the pitcher. He rubbed dirt off of it with his thumb and saw the faint traces of paint on the edge that had been the design. Pink swirls on white china. He had taken advantage of his time with Lily here, and now Snape would do anything to keep a bit of the good part stored away. He put the piece of Lily's pottery in his robe pocket.

He rose once again and glanced around the trees as he pulled his wand out of his robe. He lit the tip with a small flame.

As the flame magically burned on the tip of his wand, the flame seemed to be heating his anger once again.

_He missed her. And it hurt too much_.

Snape flung the fire at the nearest trees and they instantly caught even though they were green and alive. Snape stood and watched the fire spread from tree to tree. He wondered if he should leave. If he should get out before he became part of the fuel for the fire. But he wanted to watch a while longer.

But he couldn't watch. Not as the pieces of pitcher and the pillows were engulfed in flames. He turned around, shooting more fire at trees and bushes that hadn't caught yet.

By the time Snape got out, the forest was blazing. He turned and sat on the messy curb and watched his childhood sanctuary die. His head rested in his hands and silent tears of his misery fell down his face.

And soon, the forest was dead. Lily was dead. Maybe by burning the forest, Snape had given it to Lily. Wherever she was, maybe she had it, and was going to visit often. Was it shining with the radiance and brilliance it had when they were younger together?

Snape had killed the forest. Destroyed it. But he hadn't destroyed the memories. The horrid memories that threatened to take his life away from him now. Snape supposed that even though he had torn down the places with his fear of remembering, he would always have those memories, burning holes in the back of his mind.


End file.
